exclusive rights had been granted to it expired, the Company did not ask for a renewal of its privileges.
Its place, however, was at once occupied by a famous nobleman, who had won by his services in the field a dukedom and the bâton of a Marshal of France. This was the Duke de la Meilleraye. He threw into the scheme all the ardour of his nature, but without success, and when he died in February, 1664, after ten years of commercial enterprise, he left behind him a record of failure.
At this crisis France was well served by the statesman whom Mazarin, in his dying moments[1], had recommended to Louis XIV as his successor. The fertile mind of Colbert recognised not only the advantage but the necessity of pushing colonial enterprise. He had noticed with the deepest interest the success of England, Holland, and Portugal in that field. Why, he asked himself, should France fail where those powers had shown that it required but good direction to ensure success? In 1664, then, the very year that the death of the Duke de la Meilleraye had left the field open, he constituted a Company with a capital of fifteen million francs and a concession for exclusive trading for fifty years. So far he followed, on a larger scale, the lines on which his predecessors had marched. But his genius recognised that something more was necessary. He saw that the preceding French companies had failed because they had not
- ↑ 'Sire, je vous dois tout; mais je crois m'acquitter en quelque sorte envers votre Majesté en lui donnant Colbert.'
